The day was April 28th, 2011. I thought it was going to be an average Take Your Child To Work Day. I was only nine-years-old. Nine! No child should have to see the things I saw when my father took me along with him to his office.

7:30 AM – Dad dresses me for work. He tells me I need to wear something “shock-absorbent.” I didn’t know what he meant. He pads me in rubber. “Just in case,” he says.

8:25 AM – We enter dad’s office. It’s littered with various gadgets and gizmos, none of which I recognize as things people use on a daily basis. One thing looks like a canon small enough to fit in your hands. Another thing looks like a series of magnifying glasses protruding out of a grapefruit-sized ball made of rusty gears and cogs. I still don’t know what those things were.

8:37 AM – Dad tells me not to touch anything, adding “You might create a time anomaly that brings back the raptor-men. I detest the raptor-men –so whiny and petulant. Also, they like eating our interns. Interns don’t grow on trees. Although, the boys in the lab are trying to fix that.”

9:07 AM – Dad gives me the grand tour of the building. I wave Hello to other kids roughly my same age whose parents brought them along for the day. One of them, a boy maybe a year or two older than me, seems to be missing a soul. What he lacks in soul he makes up for in sticky green goo that coats his body. My dad says to the Goo-Boy’s dad, “Ha! The Paradoxer’s acting up again, huh?” Goo-Boy’s dad rolls his eyes in annoyance: “Damn thing tried to blink my kid out of existence. He’s lucky to have escaped with only a class-three soul-void. We’re looking for his soul now, so if you happen to find an amorphous blob of radiant energy lumped in a corner or something, let me know. It’s only been five-minuets and my kid’s already talking about nailing squirrels to tree trunks as a warning to the other squirrels or some such insanity. I can’t bring him home to my wife like this; she’ll kill me!”

My dad smiled, wished Goo-Boy’s dad Good Luck, and we continued the tour. Ten-steps later I heard the faint voice of Goo-Boy: “Father, I fear humanity is doomed to a life of anguish. We are the visage of anguish.” His father replied, “Aw, damn it. He’s getting all existential on me!”

9:30 AM – Dad walks me in to a large, grey-walled room. He says, “Want to see something cool? Well, not ‘cool’, necessarily. I’m sure in school they teach you that there’s nothing cool about giving rifles to sentient, acid-tripping bonobos. No? They don’t teach that? Well, after a few more years of research and development, I’m sure they will.”

9:50 AM – My dad and I watch my dad and I turn on the Temporal Manipulator.

9:50 AM – My dad and I watch my dad and I watch my dad and I turn on the Temporal Manipulator.

11:20 PM, 64 A.D. – My dad and I watch Rome burn. Nero did not play a fiddle. He was too busy being eaten by raptor-men. He made gurgling screams that I still hear in my sleep. “Piece of shit, Temporal Manipulator,” said my dad. “Sometimes it makes time and universes bleed in to each other in to one big cluster-eff of a mess. Don’t tell your mother I said ‘eff’. And don’t tell anyone about Nero playing a fiddle. They’ll be all like, ‘Fiddle? Don’t you mean raptor-men?!’ and they’ll think you’re weird idiot that doesn’t know basic Roman history.”

3:48 PM – The Temporal Manipulator drops us off a little later than my dad had hoped. “Three-forty-eight? If we’re fast enough, they might still have some meatloaf in the cafeteria. I hope you like raptor-men.”

3:57 PM – My dad and I eat raptor-men meatloaf. It’s pretty good, in a prehistoric/cannibalistic sort of way. I see Goo-Boy and his dad a few tables down from us as they finish off their plates. “The blood of dead things…it is wonderful, father,” said Goo-Boy, who had been cleaned and free of Goo.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Goo-Boy’s father. “Death, blood, murder, holocausts, agony, and fear impenetrable to even the highest concentrations of joy – I get it. Just – just let me eat in peace.”

“Peace is a human construct; a fairy tale. Peace is an unnatural element that is polluting the universe’s reserves of bleak nothingness and hate,” said Goo-Boy.

Leaning back in his chair with his hands behind his head, relaxing after a fine meal, Goo-Boy’s father said, “Man, I’m taking away your crayons, ’cause the shit you draw after today is going to be f*cked up.”